Wilmington Trip - Day 6

On the sixth day of our trip to Wilmington (a Thursday), we started off by going to Airlie Gardens.  It was a cooler and overcast morning so we put off going to the beach for a little bit.  We had to drive by the garden everyday on our way to Wrightsville Beach and we got in free with our Cheekwood membership so it worked out great.  Airlie Gardens is located on Bradley Creek and has 67 acres of formal gardens.

When we were there, there were copper frog sculptures throughout the garden for "Ribbit the Exhibit".   And we got a scavenger hunt package when we got there which made finding all the frogs extra fun for the boys (they got a little frog finger puppet when we were done for finding all the sculptures).

This guy in a giant beautiful tree was pretty cool.

The garden is on the creek and there is a dock that we walked on.  The tide was pretty low at the time and we found a couple of blue crabs walking around in the shallow water near the oyster beds.  After trying to dig up ghost crabs on the beach whenever we found holes, the boys were really happy to finally find a crab.

After about an hour at Airlie Gardens, we headed to the beach.  We returned to the north end of the island (by Shell Island Resort) so the boys could play in the pools of water.

The previous day we had stopped by Target when it was raining and got a few more toys.  One was a cool dinosaur sand mold.

More searching for ghost crabs ...

After a few hours at the beach, we headed back to my mom's house.  We cleaned up and had some down time before heading out to dinner.  I wanted some seafood so we went back to the beach and ate at Dockside on the Intracoastal Waterway.  Both boys finally took a nap on the drive back to the beach.  I was able to wake Carter up when we got there but Rylan wouldn't move until the food arrived.  The kids were so worn out during our trip from missing naps and getting up early that they had huge bags under their eyes, especially Rylan.  But luckily it never really affected their moods.

Slowly waking up ...

Finally awake and happy (thankfully ... you never know!) ...

Another happy boy ...

It was windy so after dinner we went down to the beach and got out our kites.  I made the boys pose for a few pictures first :)

It was almost TOO windy but the boys enjoyed their kites for a good 5 minutes :)

After flying kites we walked on the beach for a bit (and tried to run away from waves before getting too wet).

The boys decided to be lifeguards and get out the binoculars to look for people that needed help ...